Can you help me ID these?

Okay, here's the deal. I just got done processing a bunch of photos of what I am calling "Specialty Cards". These are cards that are signed (some non-English), or misprinted, or miscut, or crimped, etc. In other words, cards that appeal to a more limited audience than your normal Magic cards.

While working on these, I came across three cards that have proven themselves a mystery to me. The biggest problem with the signed cards is that all of these have come to me from collections that I have bought in the past. This means that I cannot, 100% for certain, verify that the signatures are indeed the actual signatures of the artists involved. I will be certain to state such when I list them - I don't want to mislead anyone.

But these three cards CLEARLY are not signed by their artists. The signature is identical, but all three have different artists. Instead, I figure these may be signed by someone "famous" to Magic, perhaps even the designer of the card.

That's where you, hopefully, come in. Can you identify whose signature appears on these three cards? Please comment to the post if you have any ideas or suggestions!

Magic 2010 (M10) is here!

I just finally last night finished fully processing my Magic 2010 (M10) cards. I had 4 boxes' worth of Common cards sitting around waiting to be sorted, and I finished them off and made 8 more complete Common sets last night (to replace the 8 sets that were purchased yesterday by a customer in Italy).

M10 is as exciting as I was hoping it would be when it was first announced (read my post from back then if you need a refresher). There are many cards to be thrilled about, but for me one of the biggest "hot dang" moments was when I learned that this lovely card was being reprinted:


Lightning Bolt is back! As I explained in an earlier post, Lightning Bolt was one member of the one of the earliest Cycles in Magic, the "3 for 3" cycle that included Healing Salve, Ancestral Recall, Dark Ritual and Giant Growth. Of the 5, Giant Growth was the only one to survive all the way to 10th Edition, and in fact is in M10 as well. Lightning Bolt was decreed too powerful a card after 4th Edition and hasn't been in a set since. Until now, that is!

Other cards I'm excited about are Serra Angel (back at Uncommon where she belongs). I got many copies of this card (including 2 in foil) which is cool for me, because it's the only card I personally collect. The only disappointing thing about her being at Uncommon is that when I put together complete Uncommon sets, I have to include a copy of her as well! Agony!

The coolest of the new cards is this lovely lady:

Baneslayer Angel is a Mythic Rare for a reason, she has the exact same casting cost as my favorite Serra Angel, but is 5/5 against S.A.'s 4/4, and has First Strike, Lifelink and Protection from Dragons & Demons (the only thing S.A. has on her is Vigilance). She is the hottest card in the set right now, and I was fortunate enough to get 4 copies among the 10 boxes of M10 I opened up.

Nearly every single card from M10 is currently available at www.donsmagicandsundry.com - and my eBay store includes unopened booster packs, and complete Basic Land, Common, and Uncommon sets.

Give the gift of Magic!

It's the holiday giving season, and you know you have friends or loved ones who are either:

1. as into Magic as you are, or
2. clue-free on what to give you, their Magic-loving friend/child/spouse/whatever.

Have no fear! Don's Magic and Sundry is here to help!

Over the last few weeks I have finished the "great relisting" project, and now pretty much all Uncommon cards from Core Sets Revised through 10th and expansion sets The Dark through Shards of Alara are available at http://www.donsmagicandsundry.com/, joining the Commons and basic lands from those sets. Cheaper (under $1) Rare cards from these sets and cheaper foil cards are also available at this "branch store." There are literally tens of thousands of single cards waiting for your wishlists and purchases.

My eBay store continues to hold most of the Rare cards and foil cards. In fact, I recently added over 1000 new foil cards and complete common sets from many different Core and expansion sets. I still have a great selection of pre-constructed decks and starter/tournament decks. And I've got booster packs for all sets from Revised through 10th, and from Legends through Shards of Alrara, including Unglued, Unhinged, Portal, Portal Second Age and Starter 1999.

Finally, for the true die-hard, I have a complete, Near Mint, Collector's Edition for sale. This set reprints the entire Beta Edition, including the power nine (Black Lotus, Mox Emerald, Mox Jet, Mox Pearl, Mox Ruby, Mox Sapphire, Ancestral Recall, Time Walk and Timetwister) as well as all 10 original Dual Lands. It's a must-have for the avid Magic collector.

Here are quick links for you to use (or share with whomever might be stuck trying to figure out what to get for you [nudge-nudge-wink-wink]):

• Complete common sets
• Foil cards
• Booster packs
• Starter/Tournament decks
• Preconstructed decks
• Collector's Edition

Shards of Alara is up!

The newest expansion to Magic, Shards of Alara, has finally arrived. On Friday I received my pre-order of one case of booster pack boxes and one box of tournament decks. I opened up all of the decks and 4 of the 6 boxes worth of boosters.

All of the regular basic lands, commons and uncommons are up at http://www.donsmagicandsundry.com/ and the rares, mythic rares, and foils are up in my eBay store.

The best card I opened was perhaps the most popular card in the whole set: a foil version of the most popular Mythic Rare card, called Sarkhan Vol. Here's what the card looks like:

Copies of this card have sold for as much as $70+ at auction recently (some were available before the release date), and there was only one available in an eBay Store when I went to list mine. They were asking $69.95 for theirs. I had listed my non-Foil version for $32.50, so I doubled the price to $65, keeping mine under the other seller's.

You may be wondering why I haven't included a link to the listing for this item, as I usually do. That's because it sold less than 12 hours later to a customer in Greece!

What makes this card so popular? Well the card itself is very useful, as you can use it to add a nice dragon Creature to your side of your magical battle. But from a rarity standpoint, look at it this way...the card is a Mythic Rare. Mythic Rares shows up in 1 out of every 8 booster packs. There are 15 different mythic rares, so based on odds, you'd need to open 120 packs to be sure of getting a copy of Sarkhan Vol.

But now consider the Foil part. On average you'll get one Foil Rare in every box of booster packs (or 1 in 36 packs). If a Rare is replaced with a Mythic Rare every 1 in 8 packs, this means (theoretically) that you'd need to open 8 boxes' worth of boosters to get a single Foil Mythic Rare. To get the specific Foil Mythic Rare you're looking for, then, you'd need to open 15 x 8 or 120 boxes of boosters.

Essentially - I got VERY lucky! First of all that I got a Foil Mythic Rare in only the equivalent of 5 boxes, and that the one I got was the most popular one.

Well, now it's back to the great relisting project. Wish me luck on that one!

From the Vault: Dragons

There's a new special boxed set in town, and it's name is From the Vault: Dragons.

This set is a reprint (or in one case, pre-print) set, bringing back to life in special Foil format 15 of the best Dragon (or Dragon-related) cards ever printed over Magic's 15 year history. The "pre-print" is a card (Hellkite Overlord) from the new expansion, Shards of Alara, that won't be released until early October.

And this boxed set is DAMNED hard to get your hands on! I pre-ordered my set from my usual seller about two months ago. At the time the pre-order price was about $23 for the 15 cards set, a discount over the MSRP for the product.

Then the set was sold by Wizards of the Coast (before its official release date) at a large sci-fi/comic book convention, limited to 100 copies per day, first come, first served. And then the distributors were shorted on their orders. And suddenly the pre-order price from my usual source went to over $100!

I was glad I had bought when I did.

Too bad my usual source got slighted by their distributor and my order got cancelled and refunded. So much for my great deal!

Anyway, I finally managed to get my hands on a copy from my local comic book shop. $53 with tax - not too bad given that the lowest I'd seen sell on eBay was for $51, with $8 shipping. Still, I feel rather crazy paying $53 for 15 cards!

So, I've decided to run a rather strange little experiment. This week (starting tomorrow, Saturday September 20) I will be auctioning each of the 15 cards individually. I'll start the bidding at a mere $0.99 each, and each bears this special deal text:

• If a single buyer wins 5 (or more) of the 15 From the Vault: Dragons cards I have available this week, that buyer will also win the special spin-down life counter that came in the box with the cards, at no additional shipping cost. In the event that more than one buyer wins 5+ of the cards, the buyer with the highest over-all $ total for their From the Vault: Dragons cards will win the counter.
• If a single buyer wins 10 (or more) of the 15 From the Vault: Dragons cards I have available this week, that buyer will also win the special spin-down life counter AND the original box that the cards & counter came in (complete with inner plastic case and paper insert), at no additional shipping cost.
• If a single buyer wins all 15 From the Vault: Dragons cards I have available this week, that buyer will also win the special spin-down life counter, the original box (with everything in it), and their total order will have FREE SHIPPING! Even if you then go on to buy more cards or booster packs from me. That's free shipping on YOUR ENTIRE ORDER if you win all 15 cards!

My hope, of course, is that this will encourage someone to bid like mad on the cards trying to get all 15 - and then go shopping at my store to maximize on the free shipping deal. We'll see how it goes, and I'll report back afterwards to let you know. If you want to follow the fun yourself, you can watch these items over the next week (this link won't produce any items until I list these cards after 2 p.m. EDT on Saturday 9/20). Hopefully I'll at least be able to recoup my $53!

In other news, the great relisting project (see my last post) continues. As of this writing I have completed all 10 Core Sets (Alpha Edition through 10th Edition), all 5 Starter Sets (Portal through Starter 2000) and 23 expansions (Arabian Nights through Exodus, and Coldsnap through Eventide). This does, however, still leave 24 regular expansions (Urza's Saga through Dissension) as well as the two Un-Sets (Unglued and Unhinged) and several boxed sets and the promo cards. I had hope to have this grand project finished before the next expansion, Shards of Alara, is released on October 3 - but as that is a mere two weeks away, things are looking grim. Therefore I still have over 2000 card listings (likely representing over 6000 cards) that still need to be made at the "branch store" at www.donsmagicandsundry.com. Oy!

Next time I report in, I'll let you know how the From the Vault: Dragons experiment went, and talk a little about the new set, Shards of Alara, and explain why Rare isn't the rarist kind of card any more.

Token Creature cards in 10th Edition

Since the very beginning of Magic (the original Alpha Edition in 1993) there has existed the concept of a "token Creature". In Alpha Edition there was a card The Hive, an Artifact that allowed the controller to spend 5 mana and tap The Hive to put a 1/1 Wasp Artifact Creature token with Flying into play. As long as you had 5 mana to spare, and The Hive was untapped, you could make yourself an annoying little Wasp. The intent was that the user would represent these Wasps with a coin, or a spare card, or anything that could be flipped or rotated to indicate it was "tapped" (when it attacked, for example).

Since Alpha, more and more cards have come out that creature token Creatures. Saprolings, Goblins, Angels, Beasts, Demons, Soldiers - even Sheep and Squirrels! But the intended representation remained the same until 1998.

In 1998 a "silly" set called Unglued was released. This set was never intended for serious play, and I have discussed some of the cards in it before. Included in this set were 6 honest-to-goodness official token Creature cards - cards which served no purpose other than to act as representations of token Creatures generated by a card or effect. There was a Goblin, a Pegasus, a Sheep, a Soldier, a Squirrel and a Zombie. As an example, here's the Squirrel token pictured to the right (cute, isn't he?).

Then, starting in 2001, Wizards of the Coast started releasing more official token Creature cards as part of their Players' Rewards program. I have some of these available in my eBay store at the moment. There have been many printed over the past few years, and the only way to get them was to join the program that they were given out in (or buy them from people who got them that way, as I have done).

But now, with the advent of 10th Edition, official token Creature cards are being given out in ordinary booster packs. About 1 out of every 3 10th Edition boosters contains one of six Creature token cards (which I of course have available for sale): Dragon, Goblin, Saproling, Soldier, Wasp and Zombie. Why these six? Because they are each generated by a card in the 10th Edition (Dragon Roost, Siege-Gang Commander, Verdant Force, Mobilization, The Hive and Midnight Ritual, respectively), and they are the only six token Creatures created by cards in 10th Edition. Yes, The Hive has returned to the Core Set after being absent since 6th Edition - and the Wasp Token (pictured to the right) has been printed to be used to represent the little blighters.

Wizards of the Coast has already announced that they will continue to include token Creature cards in booster packs at least through the next three expansion sets (Starting with Lorwyn, to be released this Fall), and has said that they will start to be more common, in around 2 out of every 3 packs instead. I'm glad to hear it - I think they're kinda cool, and I'm glad that "ordinary" people can get their hands on them now.

Crucible of Worlds: a great new 10th Edition card

Here's the first of the promised 10th Edition card highlights.

Above is a picture of Crucible of Worlds. I have available copies of this card in both normal and foil formats. The card was originally introduced in the Fifth Dawn expansion set, and has been imported into the Core Set with 10th Edition.

Crucible of Worlds is an Artifact that simply allows you to play Land cards from your graveyard. While this may not seem like much (especially to the Magic non-initiate), there are all sorts of very amazing uses that this allows for.

First of all, it's great defense against a Land-destruction deck. Has your opponent Stone Rained your only Island? No problem - just play it from your graveyard next turn and you're back in business.

Secondly, it's great for retrieval and re-use of Lands that require sacrificing to use a special ability. For example, in 10th Edition there is Quicksand, a Land that can be sacrificed to give target Creature without Flying -1/-2 until the end of the turn. After you've sacrificed it, it's in your graveyard. Now with Crucible of Worlds you can play it again next turn. Or if you REALLY want to get nasty, sacrifice it for its ability before you play a Land, then play the Quicksand from your graveyard and sacrifice it a second time! Now you've given that poor Creature -2/-4, thereby killing the majority of Creatures in the game. It's also great with Archaeological Dig from Invasion - a Land that can be sacrificed to add one mana of any color to your mana pool. Great combo with the Crucible in a multicolored deck.

Thirdly, there are several Spells and Abilities that require you to sacrifice Land(s) as a cost. Again, retrieving them is no problem with the Crucible. Like the Arcane Spyglass from Darksteel that allows you to sacrifice a Land to draw a card (and put a charge counter on the Spyglass - removing three charge counters also lets you draw a card). Just keep feeding the same Land to the Spyglass once a turn, and bring it back again next turn!

Fourthly, they work great with the Cycle Lands from Urza's Saga or Onslaught. Cycle that Barren Moor to draw a card (this sends the Barren Moor to the graveyard), then play it from your graveyard with the Crucible.

Finally (and these are just the uses I came up with off the top of my head), this is great for using Land cards as discards when a Spell or Ability requires discarding as a cost. Discard the Land, then play it from your graveyard. For example the lovely counterspell Foil from Prophecy allows you discard an Island and another card instead of paying its mana cost. Sneak in the Foil to counter an opponent's Spell, then rescue your Island from your graveyard next turn!

Really, the card is incredibly useful, and it's no wonder that it has proven so far to be one of the most popular of all the cards in 10th Edition.

Magic Game Day Scavenger Hunt

All right - something odd. I have recently been editing many of my listings on eBay, because I had to update the shipping options (see my earlier rant on the USPS changes). One of the listings I updated was for the Legends Rules card. This was a card included in every single booster pack of Legends that explained some new rules introduced with that set. Because every pack had one, and both Alan and I had bought lots of Legends, I have well over 100 copies of this thing

Shortly after the listing was updated, I started getting several orders for it (I had only gotten 3 or 4 in the previous year). Several people bought just one copy, some bought four, some bought one copy of this plus another single card (Spanish Lord of the Pit or Stampeding Wildebeests). Almost 10 purchases within a week-and-a-half. I could not figure out what had suddenly made this card so popular.

So, off to Google, answerer of all that is mysterious. A quick search finally revealed the answer. As part of the celebration and kicking off of 10th Edition next month (July 14 to be exact), Wizards of the Coast is sponsoring a Magic Game Day Scavenger Hunt. The link takes you to the official rules page, but here's the short version: be the person to bring in the most of 30 items to a participating retailer on 7/14/07 and win a nifty Magic Backpack. And, of course, the Legends rules card is one of the 30 items!

So, mystery solved...and new worked created. Why? Because I have a LOT of the other items on the list, that's why! And many of them are things I had never thought to put up before. Empty booster packs, display boxes, starter deck boxes, rule books...all these things that I've had lying around, many from Alan's collection ("Lot 4" as it's known around here). So, quick scramble to get these up - after all I have to sell them immediately if they are going to have any chance to get into people's hands in time for the contest. I actually created a new Store category called Scavenger Hunt to highlight these items.

My (educated) guess is that any of the specific individual cards they ask for (like Nekrataal or Mogg Fanatic) are going to be reprinted in 10th Edition.

Here's the list of the 30, with comments and/or links to the items if I have them available:

1. Arabian Nights Fishliver Oil card - I used to have several, but all have sold
2. Empty booster display box of any expansion from Alpha to Mirage - I have ones from Legends, The Dark, Fallen Empires, Ice Age and Mirage available
3. An Alpha, Beta, Unlimited or Revised Starter Pack deckbox - I have Alpha/Beta, Unlimited and Revised all available
4. Booster pack wrapper of Arabian Nights, Revised, Unlimited, Beta or Alpha - unfortunately I have none of these
5. Magic rulebook with Bog Wraith on the cover - up for auction at eBay
6. Magic rulebook with Shivan Dragon on the cover - up for auction at eBay
7. Arabian Nights Mountain card - none; bummer
8. Legends Rules card - as mentioned, available at eBay
9. Invasion Reya Dawnbringer card - I've never had one of these. I'd like one, though!
10. Exodus Paladin en-Vec card - none :-(
11. Onslaught Festering Goblin card - available at donsmagicandsundry.com
12. Visions Nekrataal card - up in eBay
13. Lord of the Pit card illustrated by Mark Tedin - from Alpha, Beta, Unlimited, Revised, Fourth Edition, or Fifth Edition. I have several up.
14. Tempest Mogg Fanatic card - available at donsmagicandsundry.com
15. Alliances Guerrilla Tactics card - both versions available at donsmagicandsundry.com (thus the two separate links)
16. Scourge Siege-Gang Commander card -
17. Giant Growth card illustrated by Sandra Everingham - from Alpha, Beta, Unlimited, Revised, Fourth Edition, Anthologies, or as a DCI FNM Promo; I have several available at donsmagicandsundry.com, including Chinese Fourth Edition
18. Visions Stampeding Wildebeests card - up at eBay
19. Mirrodin Platinum Angel card - never owned one :-(
20. Fifth Dawn Crucible of Worlds card - I'm afraid not :-(
21. Urza's Legacy Treetop Village card - don't have it :-(
22. Ice Age Adarkar Wastes card - not this one either (I used to!) :-(
23. Apocalypse Caves of Koilos card - one of the pain lands I've never owned :-(
24. Largest collection of 1 single non-basic land card - this one's kind of up to the individual, I think
25. Duelist Issue Number 1 - thanks to Alan I have this!
26. Entrant with Lowest DCI Number - up to the individual
27. An officially licensed Magic comic book - I've sold all of mine already!!!
28. Clothing with Magic artwork on it - I don't have any myself, let alone some to sell
29. Four different Friday Night Magic cards - I've never done FNM :-( I do, however, have a couple of promo cards that I've gotten in Lots!
30. Three spin down Magic life counters with different expansion symbols on them - never owned any

Anyway, many of these are special auctions that end on this Saturday night (June 30, 2007) so they'll only be up for a limited time. Others are regular store inventory items, and will remain up if they don't sell soon.

Here's hoping people are actually interested, and I'm not going crazy!

Sweet Pain: Dual Lands Part II

As mentioned in my last post, the Dual Land concept, having a single Land that could produce more than one type of mana, was a very popular one, but they were deemed too powerful and taken out of circulation. However, the idea has been revisited many times, with limitations added to the cards to take them down a notch.

SIDE NOTE: For purposes of this discussion, to save typing, I will use the same mana conventions I use in my listings. Therefore:

• "W" means "one White mana"
• "U" means "one Blue mana"
• "B" means "one Black mana"
• "R" means "one Red mana"
• "G" means "one Green mana"

The first of these attempts was in the Ice Age expansion. This introduced two types of Dual Lands. The first type became known as "Pain Lands", because when they are tapped for a colored mana they also deal 1 damage to you, although they can be tapped for one colorless mana with no damage dealt. An example is the Adarkar Wastes that can produce W or U (this link is for a 9th Edition version of this card). The second type are known as "Depletion Lands"; when they are tapped for colored mana they get a "depletion counter" on them. If they have a depletion counter on them at the beginning of your turn, you can't untap them, but remove a depletion counter instead. Essentially this means you could only use these lands every other turn. An example is the River Delta that can produce U or B. So both types had a limitation - take a point of damage, or only use every other turn.

In addition to the limitations, a striking difference between these and the original Dual Lands is that there were only 5 of each type of these - only the allied color combinations were made. So there is no Ice Age Pain Land that can make either Red or Blue mana, since Red and Blue are enemy colors. Another important difference is that these lands do not count as both of the basic Land types they mimic. In other words, a River Delta is not an Island or a Swamp, although it can be used to make U or B. The Ice Age Pain Lands were reprinted in 5th Edition, 6th Edition, 7th Edition and 9th Edition (I'm not sure why they were dropped for 8th Edition). All of these lands were Rare cards in Ice Age, as well as when reprinted in the Core Sets.

Homelands had perhaps the least popular of all attempts at making multi-color lands. It had 5 uncommon lands that could be tapped to add one colorless mana to your mana pool, or to turn one mana of any color into a specific colored mana, or to turn 2 mana of any color into an allied color of that specific color. So, for example, Koskun Keep can be tapped to turn 1 mana into R, or to turn two mana into B or G.

In Tempest, the Pain Lands idea was picked up again for a set of Rare cards. This time two significant changes were made compared to the original ones in Ice Age. First of all, an additional limitation was added. These Pain Lands comes into play tapped, so you can't use them immediately upon putting them down. Secondly, again only 5 were made, but this time in the 5 possible enemy color combinations. An example of the Tempest Pain Lands is the Scabland that can produce R or W. Tempest also had 5 uncommon Lands that could be tapped for one colorless mana, or for one of two possible colored manas. If the colored mana was chosen, the Land would not untap the next turn. These are functionally the same as the Depletion Lands from Ice Age without the confusion of dealing with depletion counters. An example is the Mogg Hollows that can add either R or G to your mana pool, but then doesn't untap your on next turn.
The expansion called Invasion introduced two new types of Dual Lands. First there were 5 common lands that could be tapped add one mana of a given color to your mana pool, or be sacrificed to add one each of the two ally colors of that given color to your mana pool. For example the Ancient Spring can be tapped to add one U to your mana pool, or can be tapped and sacrificed to add WB to your mana pool. The second set of lands was a set of 5 uncommon cards that could produce either of two allied colors, but came into play tapped as a limitation. For example the Urborg Volcano comes into play tapped, but thereafter can be tapped to add B or R to your mana pool. These 5 uncommon cards were reprinted in 8th Edition as uncommon cards (for example this 8th Edition Salt Marsh that can produce U or B), I guess to replace the Pain Lands that were taken out after 7th Edition only to be added back in for 9th Edition.

In Apocalypse, it was apparently decided that the additional limitation of coming into play tapped added to the Pain Lands in Tempest was unnecessary, so a new set of 5 enemy color combination Pain Lands was introduced. These are functionally identical to the 5 Pain Lands in Ice Age, except that they combine non-allied colors together. An example is Shivan Reef that can produce either R or U. These 5 Pain Lands have been reprinted in 9th Edition (such as this Yavimaya Coast that can produce G or U). So 9th Edition has a complete set of all 10 possible two-color combination Pain Lands, making it the first Core Set since Revised Edition to have all 10 combinations represented.

Planeshift had an odd twist on the dual land idea. It introduced 5 "Trio Lands", the Lairs of five Legendary Dragons. These Lands required you to return a non-Lair Land you control to its owner's hand when you play them, but they can be tapped to add one of any of the three colors of mana needed to summon that particular Dragon. For example, Crosis' Catacombs can be tapped to add U, B, or R to your mana pool. Crosis, the Purger is a Legendary Dragon that has a casting cost of 3UBR.

An interesting variation of the Dual Land concept was introduced in Odyssey. This set included 5 lands that could be tapped to turn one mana of any color into two mana of allied colors. For example the Darkwater Catacombs could be tapped for one mana of any color (even colorless) to make UB.

Champions of Kamigawa introduced 5 uncommon Lands that were functionally identical to the 5 uncommon lands in Tempest. These lands can produce a colorless mana with no penalty, or one of two allied color manas at a cost of not untapping the next turn. This means that the Pinecrest Ridge from Champions of Kamigawa does exactly the same thing as Mogg Hollows from Tempest.

Now in the Ravnica block of expansions (Ravnica: City of Guilds, Guidpact and Dissension) the whole underlying concept involved 10 Guilds, each representing a melding of two colors of magic. Each Guild had a special rare Dual land that comes close to mimicking the original Dual Lands. Like the originals, each counts as two different basic Lands, and can produce either of the appropriate two mana colors. As a limitation, however, each comes into play tapped unless you pay 2 life when you play it - a nasty upfront cost, but cheaper in the long run than a Pain Land if you use it more than twice. And if you can afford to wait a turn before you use it, then no life cost at all! A good example is the Overgrown Tomb, a Land from Ravnica: City of Guilds that is a Swamp Forest, so can be tapped to add either B or G to your mana pool. Judging by current prices these cards are even more popular than the Pain Lands, and I wouldn't be too surprised if they make their way into a Core Set (maybe 10th Edition?), replacing the Pain Lands in that set.

Each Guild in the Ravnica block sets also had a common Land that was interesting. They come into play tapped, and you have to return a Land you control to its owner's hand when you play it. But thereafter it can be tapped to add two mana to your mana pool, one of each of the Guild's two colors. For example the Izzet Boilerworks from Guildpact adds RU to your mana pool when tapped for mana.

The Time Spiral expansion added 5 new "Mana Battery Dual Lands." This combined two concepts. The Dual Land idea I've been talking about was melded to the "Mana Battery" Land idea first introduced in Fallen Empires. The basic idea here is that these Lands can be tapped at a cost of 1 mana to add a storage counter to them. They can then later be tapped for a price of one mana and you can remove any number of storage counters you want (call it "X"). You can then add X mana to your mana pool, in any combination of two allied mana colors. So, for example, the Calciform Pools can be used to store up mana of any color, and then release the stored mana as either W or U.

Finally, the newest set to be released, Future Sight, introduced five new varieties of "Dual Land", one for each ally-color combination. Each one does something different. Graven Cairns can turn either R or B into RR, BB or a RB. Grove of the Burnwillows can add R or G to your mana pool, but each opponent gains one life (almost the opposite effect as a Pain Land). Horizon Canopy can add G or W to your mana pool, but you have to pay 1 life for the privilege (functionally the same as a Pain Land, but the wording makes the life loss unpreventable). Nimbus Maze can add W to your mana pool only if you control an Island, and U only if you control a Plains. And River of Tears can be tapped to add U to your mana pool, or B instead if you played a Land this turn.

How's Bayou? A look at the Dual Lands.

Okay, at long last, the promised post on the Dual Lands! When I got done writing this, I realized it was WAY too long, so I have split it up into two posts.

Our saga starts way back in the very first edition of Magic, Alpha. In this original set were introduced 10 rare cards, know collectively as the Dual Lands. Each of these land cards counted as two basic Land types, and could be used to produce mana of two different colors. For example, the Bayou (of which I have one up for auction this week) counts as both a Forest and a Swamp, and could be used to make Green mana (G) or Black mana (B).

Since there are five colors of mana possible (see my previous post on the subject), that's 10 possible combinations, and thus the 10 original Dual Lands. These lands are:

• Badlands (Swamp Mountain)
• Bayou (Forest Swamp)
• Plateau (Plains Mountain)
• Savannah (Plains Forest)
• Scrubland (Plains Swamp)
• Taiga (Mountain Forest)
• Tropical Island (Island Forest)
• Tundra (Plains Island)
• Underground Sea (Island Swamp)
• Volcanic Island (Island Mountain)

These 10 Lands survived through Revised Edition before they were declared too powerful, and taken out of print. They remain immensely popular, however, and the most recent versions from Revised Edition sell right now in the $25-$30 range; ones from Unlimited Edition in the $30-$45 range; and ones from Alpha Edition and Beta Edition sell in excess of $100.

Since they have been taken out of the set, however, several attempts have been made to create Lands that could make multiple colors of mana, with some limitation to them to make them a little less powerful. I'll look at these other attempts in my next post, Dual Lands Part II

Damnation - the Black Wrath of God

One of the really cool things about the latest sets of Magic, the Time Spiral block (Time Spiral, Planar Chaos and Future Sight) is the Timeshifted cards each set has. I think I'll save a more detailed explanation for another time, but suffice to say that in Planar Chaos we were introduced to versions of cards that might have been, in some alternate reality.

One of the most popular is called Damnation. What makes it so popular is that it is not only an alternate version of one of the more popular cards in the game, Wrath of God, but it's also in what is arguably the most popular color to play, Black.

Damnation is identical to Wrath of God in all ways except the mana needed to cast it. Instead of 2WW (2 mana of any color plus two White mana) it costs 2BB (2 of any color plus two Black). The artwork is even fitting - it is essentially a negative image of the Wrath of God artwork first introduced in 7th Edition. And it should be - it's by the same artist, Kev Walker.

Both cards destroy all Creatures in play, and they can't be Regenerated. It's a great way to clear the battlefield and then launch a bunch of your own Creatures (preferably ones with Haste so they can attack right away). And in a Black deck this is even better because Black has all sorts of Spells that manipulate the graveyard, either requiring that you remove a Creature there from the game, or allowing you to reanimate it. Nothing like obliterating your opponent's nastiest Creature, then taking control of it for yourself using something like Animate Dead.

So, of course, if I'm highlighting this card there must be a reason, right? You guessed it - I've got one up for auction right now. It should, I hope, end up going for over $10, maybe upwards of $15 or so. I will of course report back after the auction closes on Sunday (May 27).

Hulk Flash! A new deck that has some older cards suddenly worth something!

I'll later get to a post getting everyone up to date on recent happenings here at The Sundry (short version: I'm now up to Lot 20, and am currently buried in 6000+ new cards that need to be processed and added to the inventory) but first I wanted to share an oddity that I discovered while processing Lot 14.

Lot 14 consisted of 460 rare cards - a nice little set. In there were included two copies of a card card Flash - one of the original copies from Mirage, and another copy of the reprinted version in Sixth Edition. When I went to list these two I was very surprised to find a feeding frenzy of sorts going on with this card right now. So, being as curious as George I decided to investigate.

It turns out that the official errata to the card, which made it a good deal less effective with certain combinations, has been revoked, allowing someone to find a combination that can, typically, result in a win on the first or second turn of the game.

The deck hinges upon two cards, the above-mentioned Flash and Protean Hulk from Dissension, thus the name Hulk Flash (a take off on the immortal "Hulk smash!" battle-cry of the green Goliath in Marvel Comics, presumably). Other important cards in the deck are Phyrexian Marauder from Visions, Shifting Wall from Stronghold and Disciple of the Vault from Mirrodin.

The basic gist of the deck is that you cast Flash, which allows you to pay the casting cost of a Creature -2 mana as an instant, and puts the Creature into the graveyard if you do not. You use Flash to cast Protean Hulk, but do not pay the mana cost. When Protean Hulk goes to your graveyard, you are allowed to find any number of Creature cards in your library with total casting cost no greater than 6 and put them into play. You grab four Disciples of the Vault (total casting cost 4) and four Shifting Walls and 4 Phyrexian Marauders (both are Artifact Creatures that have casting costs equal to X - any amount of mana you wish). When Creatures with X in the casting cost are brought into play in this manner, X is equal to 0. Since both of these are 0/0 Creatures that come into play with X +1/+1 counter on them, and X is 0, they therefore get zero +1/+1 counters, die immediately and go to your graveyard. Disciple of the Vault allows you to have target player lose 1 life whenever an Artifact is put into a graveyard from play. You just put in 8 Artifact Creatures, and you have 4 Disciples of the Vault in play...BAM! Your opponent loses 32 life right there. Since you start the game with only 20 life....

Incredibly nasty, incredibly fast and also incredibly difficult to stop. Ergo, everybody wants one! So the key pieces of the engine have become very popular, with prices to match. Mystery solved. If you'd like to read a bit more on this deck, here's the article I read when researching the thing.

Cycle 2: Ancestral Recall, Dark Ritual, Giant Growth, Healing Salve, Lightning Bolt

Okay, last time I promised to write about a lesser-known cycle from the original set (Alpha, Beta and Unlimited editions) that included the card from the "Power 9" called Ancestral Recall. Although the cards themselves are all very well known, the fact that they are a cycle is somewhat less well know, as their relationship is not necessarily obvious at first.

Here's a photo of the Unlimited Edition versions of the five cards in this cycle (a compilation of five photos from actual cards I have, or have had, in my Store):

And here's a description of the five cards. See if you can identify what they have in common (there's three answers to this question).

Ancestral Recall: Instant; target player draws 3 cards; casting cost U.
Dark Ritual: Instant; add 3 Black mana to your mana pool; casting cost B.
Giant Growth: Instant; target Creature gains +3/+3 until the end of the turn; casting cost G.
Healing Salve: Instant; gain 3 life, or prevent up to 3 damage from being dealt; casting cost W.
Lightning Bolt: Instant that deals 3 damage to target Creature or player; casting cost R.

Do you have it yet? Here they are...All five cards are Instants (actually Dark Ritual was originally an "Interrupt" but that term was done away with awhile back, and so all older versions have errata to make them Instants). All five cost a single mana of their given color. And all five have the number 3 in them.

Yep, the original thinking for this cycle was "let's have a set of spells that all cost one colored mana and do something typical of the color involving the number 3." So, Lightning Bolt, from the chaotic Red domain, deals 3 damage, while Healing Salve, from the orderly White domain heals 3 damage. And so on.

Ancestral Recall was deemed way too powerful. In a game where cards represent Spells, and casting Spells is how you win, being able to draw three cards for a measly one Blue mana was just a giant boost. At first they thought they'd take care of that by making it a Rare card while the others were all commons. But, finally, reason took over, and the card was dropped from the set entirely after Unlimited Edition. There have been variations on this card throughout the history of the game. For example: Brainstorm in Ice Age allows you to draw three cards, then put two cards from your hand on top of your library (for U); Ambition's Cost in 8th Edition, a Black card that allows you to draw three cards, but you lose three life (for a casting cost of 3B). The closest is the new card from Time Spiral called Ancestral Vision - a card that, for U, is Suspended for 4 turns (it's removed from the game for that period, then takes effect after 4 turns have passed) then allows you to draw three cards. Ancestral Vision is, essentially, a time delayed Ancestral Recall.

Lightning Bolt was also eventually deemed too powerful, but it survived until the 4th Edition. The closest you'll see now is Shock, a common card first introduced in Stronghold, and added to the core set in 6th Edition, that deals 2 damage for R.

Dark Ritual has been reprinted many times. For a long time, it would get remade as a common card every time a new major set came out (one with its own basic lands). So there was a Dark Ritual in Ice Age, in Mirage, in Urza's Saga and in Mercadian Masques. It made it through 5th Edition before being dropped from the core set. One important change that got made to this card after the Alpha/Beta/Unlimited days is that the "add 3 black mana" got redone as "add BBB" - using three copies of the symbol for Black mana. Why? Because Sleight of Mind and similar cards allow the caster to change all occurrences of a color word in a Spell, resulting in people casting Dark Ritual and then changing (or having changed by an opponent) the color of the mana produced by Dark Ritual. But Sleight of Mind does not affect mana symbols, so that's no longer a problem.

Healing Salve has also seen many incarnations. It survived all the way through 8th Edition (the current 9th Edition is the only core set to not have it). It also had a version in Mirage and Urza's Saga. It has also been rewritten. The newest text reads "Choose one - target player gains 3 life; or prevent the next 3 damage that would be dealt to target Creature or player this turn." Actually, that first bit is a significant change from the very first version, that would only give the caster 3 life, not "target player."

Giant Growth is the only one of this cycle to survive all the way to 9th Edition. It made an appearance in Ice Age as well (joining the aforementioned Dark Ritual and Healing Salve). It has also inspired similar cards, like Monstrous Growth (a Sorcery that would give target Creature +4/+4 until the end of the turn for 1G).

Okay, that's all for now - next time I'll take a look at another cycle that I've discovered recently in the Scourge Expansion that I like.

And, finally, a Store update for those of you who have been missing them: Lot 6 is FINISHED! Yes, that's right, the over 6000 cards I bought way back in November have all finally been put up for sale. Most are in the new store at http://www.donsmagicandsundry.com/ but some made it into the eBay store. Lot 7 is also all up finally. One of the coolest cards there was a Foil Llanowar Elves from 7th Edition. And A large chunk of Lot 8 is right now up for auction, including an unopened pack of Revised Edition among other goodies. Also up for auction right now is a copy of Captain America #25, the issue you may have heard news reports about that features the (apparent?) assassination of the Red, White and Blue clad hero.

Mox Emerald, Mox Jet, Mox Pearl, Mox Ruby, Mox Sapphire

One of my favorite aspects of the game of Magic are the "cycles" that the designers build into the game. A "cycle" is a set of 5 cards that are are related to each other in some way, one in each of the five colors of Magic (White, Green, Red, Black and Blue). My current plan is to make my next several posts highlight some of these cycles, because I find them interesting - and hopeflly you will as well.

Arguably the most famous cycle was introduced in the very first incarnation of the game (the Alpha Edition). Individually they are the Mox Emerald, Mox Jet, Mox Pearl, Mox Ruby and Mox Sapphire. Collectively they are referred to as the Moxes, or Moxen if the speaker is feeling clever.

Note: the photo is a montage of four actual card photos from my Store, plus one
unabashedly borrowed from MagicCards.info - can you guess which one?

Each mox is an Artifact with a casting cost of zero - meaning that it costs nothing to put it into play. Each can then be tapped to add one mana of a specific color (Red for the Ruby, White for the Pearl, Green for the Emerald, Blue for the Sapphire and Black for the Jet) to your mana pool. Normally mana comes from Lands that you put into play, but you're generally limited to placing one Land per turn. Since mana is what's used to cast the spells in the game, the Moxen are a great way to get cheap (zero casting cost, remember) and fast mana to start casting bigger spells faster.

The Moxen are five of what are known as the "Power 9" (the other four being Timetwister, Time Walk, Ancestral Recall and the grand-daddy of them all, the Black Lotus). These are the 9 most sought-after cards in the game. They were all deemed too powerful, and were taken out of the game after only three editions (Alpha, Beta and Unlimited), and have not been reprinted since. Since those Editions were only printed in English, and had limited print runs (still early in the existence of Magic), and these were all Rare cards even then, they are EXTREMELY rare now, and sell for hundreds of dollars apiece. Unfortunately I don't have any available right at the moment - although Lot 4 had one each of four of the Moxen from Unlimited as well as a Mox Pearl from Beta. So I have had the privilege of dealing with them before.

Ancestral Recall, another of the Power 9, is itself also part of a cycle that I will talk about next time. Although the five cards in the cycle are pretty well known, the fact that they make a cycle is less so - the relationship among them is rather subtle in comparison to most cycles.

MtG: Pithing Needle - Saviors of Kamigawa Rare Mint Magic Card

One of the cards I got in Lot 8 (see previous post) was a rare card from the Saviors of Kamigawa set called the Pithing Needle. This was a card that I hadn't heard of before (remember I haven't really played Magic since 1997 or so), and so was pleasantly surprised when I went to list it in the store and discovered that its quite the hot property!

Here's the card's description, from my listing:

Pithing Needle: Artifact; as Pithing Needle comes into play, name a card; activated Abilities of the named card can't be played unless they're mana abilities; casting cost 1.

This is a nasty little card that can be used to effectively shut down an entire opponent's deck if it depends on their using a specific card's ability. At the very least it's useful for preventing that blasted Prodigal Sorcerer from pinging you to death one life point at a time! I've done a little research into the card, and it was hot right from the start - people were paying upwards of $20 for the thing when the set first came out back in the middle of 2005. Some predicted that the card would turn out to be overrated, and that the price would drop into a more reasonable range later.

Well, two years later, and even with Saviors no longer being the fresh set on the block, Pithing Needle continues to sell for anywhere from $15-$25 (as I write this, the cheapest in a Store on eBay is $22.99). I've got mine, a brand new, Minty fresh-from-the-pack card, up for $24, right in the middle of the pack, price-wise.

I should mention if you're looking for common cards from Saviors of Kamigawa, you can find them at my online store - just do a search for "Saviors" and you'll see all the cards available.

MtG: Mox Ruby - Unlimited RARE Magic Card Poor Power 9

Sorry there's been no update in a while. I've been very busy!

Alan's collection is VERY extensive. His cards added to mine more than double the stock that I had in my Store, and a lot of it is REALLY good stuff.

I took the first couple of days to get the stuff up that I'm selling on commission. Many of those have sold over the last week - in fact I'm now an honest-to-goodness Power Seller in my own right, having sold over $1800 worth of items in the last 7 days alone!

One of the items which I got when I bought the bulk of his collection was a Mox Ruby which was not in really great shape. I was not at all sure what to ask for it, so I decided to take Josh's advice from a month or so ago and "let the eBayers decide" what it was worth. I listed it for auction starting at $9.99 and sat back. I accidentally made the auction a 3-day instead of the 7-day I had intended, and did not notice until it had a bid, so I couldn't change it.

As of this writing, it's been bid up to $152.50.

The auction ends early tomorrow afternoon, and I'll report then on the final price.

Oh, speaking of final prices, the Collector's Edition I had up for auction ended at $631.12 - short of the $800 that a similar set had gone for just a few days earlier, but not too shabby. There's still another copy in the Store (asking price $900) and one more which I will auction off later.

Oh, and Lot 2 has almost paid for itself, with a good number of cards still to go.

More later, when I have time (maybe in a month?).

MtG: Flooded Strand - Onslaught - RARE

This is the title of a listing which came as a bit of a surprise when I was entering the cards from the second lot that I purchased (the one I ran down to Arlington to pick up).

The way I type up items is that I enter the descriptive information: title, set and rarity for the item title; what the card does and its condition for the text description. Then I research the card on eBay to see what other people are offering them up for. I then price mine such that they aren't the cheapest available, but are a bit below what seems to be the average.

Well, when it came to research Flooded Strand I found that this card is, for some reason, extremely popular. My price ended up being $15 for the blasted thing! Very pleasing to find that there was such a valuable card in the lot that I was unaware of. The puzzling thing is that I cannot tell why it's so popular! It seems to me to not be such an incredibly useful card. The only thing I can think of is that someone must have used this card in a deck to win a tournament or something similar. If a card is a key card in a winning deck like that, it suddenly gains a massive popularity world-wide as people scramble to recreate or improve on that winning deck.

Anyway, the point to this post here is that last night I completed the listings for "Lot 2" (as I've been calling it) and got them all up in the store. Suddenly "the Sundry" has a lot more categories available, as most of these cards were from sets that I didn't previously own any cards in.

Now I need to tackle "Lot 1" - that set of mostly common cards I won a while back. The problem? Our digital camera has started acting up, and I am unable to take photos at the moment. I ended up scanning the last few cards I wanted to get up today (a few Slivers that I took out of a deck), and the scans are just too grainy. I have abandoned that as a viable option. So, now I either hope our camera starts behaving itself, or look into buying a cheap digital with no bells & whistles (since I don't need anything fancy for my purposes). SIGH.